Writing Awards and Scholarships

Writing Awards | Educational Scholarships

Unpublished Writer Award: General Guidelines

• Applicant must mail four copies of an original, unpublished fiction work (short story or novel excerpt) not to exceed 2,000 typed words on double-spaced pages.
• Applicant must include a cover sheet with the following information: applicant's name, address, telephone number and e-mail where possible; 250-word biographical sketch, including your writing goals and current status
• The $500 winner will be invited, along with a guest, to attend our annual awards ceremony and work may be featured in the Go On Girl! Quarterly newsletter and/or on our website.
  

2005 Unpublished Writer Award Winner
	2005 Award Winner: Camille Acker Camille Acker is an editorial assistant at John Wiley & Sons, a book-publishing house in New Jersey. She was born in Columbia, Maryland and raised in Washington, D.C. She graduated with honors from Howard University with a BA in English. She is inspired in part by her mother, a former book editor. Her winning submission was entitled Walking on Tiptoes.

2004 Award Winner: Djuana Brockington
(South Carolina)
Djuana Brockington is a thirty-seven year single mother of a nine-year-old "diva in training." She has worked in the field of social services for fifteen years, but has an intense passion for reading and writing and has been a "closet" writer for most of her adult life. She received the Go On Girl 2004 Unpublished Writer Award for her novel excerpt "The Date." Ms. Brockington resides in North Charleston, South Carolina.

2003 Award Winner: Jacinda Townsend (New York)
Jacinda Townsend is a 2001 graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She has been writing fiction for almost a decade and has been published in numerous literary magazines, including African Voices, The Maryland Review, Obsidian II, Passages North, Phoebe, and Xavier Review. Her work has been anthologized in the O. Henry Festival Stories 2000 and Telling Stories: Fiction by Kentucky Feminists. She was a Fulbright fellow in creative writing in Cote d'Ivoire (West Africa), the producer of an annual Black History Month feature called The Darker Ink: Writing from the African Diaspora and for three years, she founded a minority fiction workshop under the same name. She teaches fiction writing at New York City's Gotham Writers' Workshop and was a finalist for the 2002 Hurston-Wright Award. Ms. Townsend received the Go On Girl 2003 Unpublished Writer Award for her novel excerpt "Blofué."

2002 Award Winner: Sue Williams (Indiana)
Sue Williams was born on November 2, 1955. A native of Indianapolis, Indiana, she enjoys reading a diverse selection of literature. Her written work has been previously published in the Des Moines Register. She received the Go On Girl 2002 Unpublished Writer Award for her novel excerpt "Just Another Day."

2001 Award Winner: Trina Gallop (Virginia)
Trina Gallop was raised in rural North Carolina with childhood aspirations of writing. She successfully pursued a formal education from the University of Virginia and Cornell University, earning a BA and MS, respectively. Her greatest learning potential, however, commenced during her studies abroad in Nigeria. Ms. Gallop edits and writes technical documentation at an e-commerce company in Charlottesville, VA. She received the Go On Girl 2001 Unpublished Writer Award for "Elizabeth's Eyes," a novel excerpt from "Shades of Gray."

2000 Award Winner: Tara Owens Baldridge (Chicago)
Tara Owens Baldridge traveled to Chicago from Shreveport, Louisiana to study English Language & Literature, Dramatic Language & Literature and Literature and Practical Drama in the Humanities Program at the University of Chicago. A writer for more than fifteen years, she has written poetry, plays, and short stories and has also penned a screen adaptation of a novel. She is employed as a children's book buyer at 57th Street Books in Chicago, Illinois. She received the Go On Girl 2000 Unpublished Writer Award for her novel excerpt "When A Man Is Wrong."